Halloween

Larianne

Just eating a bit of brack there and got me thinking about Halloween. Well it's retro for me, not having trick or threated for a good 10 years or so.

I absolutely love this time of year! Think I love it more than christmas.

The dark nights, dressing up as ,nearly always, as a witch. Watching Mary Fitzgerald on Make 'N Do making bats or someting scary!

Eating my dinner and mam saying to eat some weird spinach stuff and there was a 5p in it. (I still dont get that one!) And then praying to god I'd get the Cheapo ring in the brack. Just so I could wear it to school proudly the next day.

Then head up to my friend's estate and go trick or threating. I've never lived in an estate so I always went to friends houses. One of my mate's lived in a huge housing estate. We'd go to about 50 houses. I'd be eating my goodies for weeks! And then there were the houses that gave money instead of sweets! Ooh we made sure we went to those houses!!

Then mam would bring us around in the car to see all the big bonfires! Was great. I'd be wrecked when I got home.

What you love about Halloween?

Irjudge1

Bonfires! Building bonfires. I used to love building bonfires. Mattresses and pallets and tyres all that environmentally unfriendly stuff.

As for fireworks they seem to have all the decommissioned semtex available to kids now. We might have gotten our hands on a 5 pack of sparklers ooooohhhh the fizzle.

missingtime

Did the braic have other things in it at one stage? There was a stick and some other stuff aswell.

dlofnep

Feeding children to my cat that come to my door.

Dizzyblabla

missingtime wrote:

Did the braic have other things in it at one stage? There was a stick and some other stuff aswell.

a stick, a pea, a rag and a ring as far as I remember... I don't even remember what they all meant... I'll be back once I've googled it!

Larianne

a stick and a pea? ya wah? I'm guessing if ya got the ring you were the better one off.

Just remembered. Best Halloween was when I was 12/13 and we stayed in an apt contained in the walls of a castle up North. Was brillant!! Place scared the bejaysus outta me and wouldn't go down to the kitchen on me own! But it was great halloween night up on top of the castle walls with our sparklers looking at the (very few) fireworks going off.

Dizzyblabla

here we go:

Traditionally at this time a ring, stick, rag and pea were placed in the “breac”. The person to get the ring was to be married within the year, the rag condemned the person who got it to be single forever, the stick meant physical violence in a marriage and the pea predicted wealth.

I think they just stick with the ring these days!! although i could do with the pea myself!

Nightwish

hate the brack stuff. To me it always tasted like what I imagined the contents of a hoover bag would be like. I like Halloween, probably because its the only day of the year I don't get funny looks because of my clothes. But as a kid I didnt do much trick or treating but I liked seeing everyone elses costumes. these days I hate the bangers and fireworks that seem to go off throughout the night for the 3 weeks before Halloween, although thats something I only experience in Dublin and not at home.

Roar

halloween for me means running around throwing eggs at my friends and random passers by.. simpler times...

Scarinae

Larianne wrote:

Watching Mary Fitzgerald on Make 'N Do making bats or someting scary!

Is she that mad blonde one who was often on the Den? If she's the one I'm thinking of, I think she was terrifying enough without her making bats or whatever!
The easiest costume I ever wore was a homemade ghost one - just a sheet with holes cut in it for the eyes. I wore sunglasses underneath so that you'd see two black patches instead of my eyes, it was grand until it got really dark and I couldn't see a bloody thing! My most embarrassing costume was when my sister decided to dress me up as a pumpkin, she put me in a huge orange jumper and stuck cut-out yellow bits of paper on the front as the face, and she stuffed me until I was round. I think I wore green tights and I had leaves in my hair. Another year I dressed as Princess Leia from Star Wars, I plaited my hair around my head the way she has it in Return of the Jedi (it was pretty long at the time) and I wore one of my Mum's white dresses. Nobody knew what the hell I was meant to be of course! When I was sixteen I made my own superhero costume for a Halloween party, I had a pink glittery cape and matching underpants over my leggings, I loved it but everywhere I went I left a trail of pink glitter behind me. I think those are my only notable costumes, the rest of the time I just dressed up as a witch. What did everyone else dress up as when they were kids?
I never lived on an estate so we used to always go to the estate down the road from me. None of the residents knew who I was and they'd always give me funny looks before they gave me the sweets. My favourite were always the houses that gave toffee apples, I adored them! Another great thing about Halloween is that loads of families get these multipacks of sweets, they have a packet of purple sweets in them called Parma Violets that EVERYBODY hates except me - everyone used to just give me theirs! Anyone know the sweets I mean? Many people think they taste like soap/chalk, but I love them!
One annoying thing about trick-or-treating when you're tall is that some people won't give you stuff. When I was twelve I got way less than everyone else because I looked way older than I was (even then I was having trouble getting child fares on buses), loads of people would give sweets to my friends and would glare at me, saying "Aren't you a little old to be trick-or-treating?" Grrrrrnnnmpphh, ruin my favourite time of year why don't you!
I wish I could still trick-or-treat *sigh*

CiDeRmAn

Love Halloween, my wife is a real dresser up and she and her sisters get prizes nearly every year for their creativity.
I live in North County Dublin and every year we would denude a couple of trees in the fields out here to build our bonfire (we are in the country side), also used to raid local farms for the tractor tires used to hold plastic sheeting over bails of hay, rolling the tires over a couple of miles of boggy countryside in the dead of night then to mount them on the bonfire, building it for the month of October, having further raiding parties on neighbouring bonfires, early nights bringing essential dark cover!
Now, as an alleged grownup of 33, I get to do stuff with my son, nieces and nephews, building a smaller bonfire in my back garden, having fireworks, banana bread, braic, bobbing for apples and all the rest, its great, better than christmas cos there's no pressure to buy lots of gifts for people, just a large bowl of sweets by the door, fanatastic fun.

spiderlegs

Fishie wrote:

I never lived on an estate so we used to always go to the estate down the road from me. None of the residents knew who I was and they'd always give me funny looks before they gave me the sweets. My favourite were always the houses that gave toffee apples, I adored them! Another great thing about Halloween is that loads of families get these multipacks of sweets, they have a packet of purple sweets in them called Parma Violets that EVERYBODY hates except me - everyone used to just give me theirs! Anyone know the sweets I mean? Many people think they taste like soap/chalk, but I love them!
One annoying thing about trick-or-treating when you're tall is that some people won't give you stuff. When I was twelve I got way less than everyone else because I looked way older than I was (even then I was having trouble getting child fares on buses), loads of people would give sweets to my friends and would glare at me, saying "Aren't you a little old to be trick-or-treating?" Grrrrrnnnmpphh, ruin my favourite time of year why don't you!
I wish I could still trick-or-treat *sigh*

Ok that is only two people I have ever known to have liked those violet sweets.That trick or treating thing used to happen to me to, it used to make me really mad and uncomfortable...just because I was tall.Hmph.

Pigman II

Can't say I'm too wild about Halloween night itself but I did love the build-up to it. Things I remember from being a kid are getting old truck tyres from a car garage for the bonfire and trying to roll them up a hill despite them being nearly as tall as me at that age. Also throwing sticks at chestnut trees to get the conkers down. That was fun. I just love the cold wind against my face at this time of year. You really can't beat it. As for Halloween I think it loses its appeal when you stop finding horror movies scary anymore. Like Xmas it's just for the kids then .... lucky barstewards.

Ann Elk

I love the way that the whole island turns into Knackeragua for a night, fireworks and emergency sirens abound and loads of little scumbags get pissed, have fights and enough unprotected sex to ensure a fresh supply of 'Kaitlins', 'Chardonnays', 'Rochelles' etcto terrorise us in the years to come. Yeah, halloween rocks

fade2black

I absolutely, unreservedly, hate halloween. If there's a bah humbug mantra equivalant for this pointless occasion then I would be reciting it on a daily basis around this time of the year. It gives teens a muppet holiday and is really a horrible time of the year for the elderly living on their own or to a lesser extent, pets who find themselves strapped to rockets or maybe just scared by all the bangs. If I had my way, the whole thing would be scaled down in such a way that it lasted only an hour and was for the age bracket 4-12...and pound city were'nt allowed advertise anything halloween related until a week before.

So, in summary, not a nice time for the fire brigade, guards, parents, pets, the elderly etc... On the other hand...Off licences, Tacky pound city style shops, muppets and whoever eats/sells monkey nuts love it for good reason.

Pinx

Larianne wrote:

Watching Mary Fitzgerald on Make 'N Do making bats or someting scary!

...and better still, spending a whole afternoon in primary school making a Hallowe'en mask out of old Cornflake boxes, black wool (for hair), an elastic band to secure it around your head...... ah those were the days!

holly_johnson

Larianne wrote:

Eating my dinner and mam saying to eat some weird spinach stuff and there was a 5p in it. (I still dont get that one!)

Colcannon...yummy... it's curly kale and onion mixed into mashed potato. Me and my brother used to have war over who'd get the 5 or 10p in it!
I make it any time I see the kale in the shops, thought the lure of money isn't enough to make my daughter eat it.

I LOVE halloween, going to carve pumpkins and make gravestones to put in the garden and make monster cookies etc for a party on the Sunday night.

Scarinae

How did I forget to mention carving pumpkins! I love doing that, I adore the smell of pumpkin flesh, and we always roast the seeds they're so good! Not too mad about pumpkin pie though... We always have loads in the windows on Halloween night, and my Mum has this big flashing skull she puts in the fanlight over our door... It's actually really terrifying coming in a squeaky gate and walking up the path of a big looming Georgian house lit only by the light of pumpkins and a flashing skull, it's no wonder we hardly ever get trick-or-treaters. But on the plus side, this means I get to eat it all when I come in later that night! Ha!

billy the squid

Two Hallowe'eens I remember were in the mid to late 1980s

On one occasion, there was this girl, from one of the better off families. every estate seemed to have a family like that back then, when the rest of us would build a shrine to a £5 note if we had it, these people always were showing off their wealth, actually they were more nouveaux riche really as they acquired their wealth through an insurance claim or something like that. one day they were as broke as us, the next they were being extravigent with money.

Anyways back to this girl. For some unknown reason the poshie school she went to decided to organise their debs night on October 31st. So off she goes and blows two or three hundred notes on a fancy debs dress, spends hours on end painting herself up for the big night. Anyway, her falla turns up in the black limo, (actually it was more like the family car you see at a funeral home) and out she pops looking absoloutly gorgeous.

Between the time she left the front door to the time she got to her front gate, she must have been pelted with at least 150 raw eggs. Lousy i know, but hay, they suddenly thought the rest of the world was beneath them once they had a few bob.

Another Hallowe'en I remember was playing the usual hallowe'en games, the try to bight the apple hanging out of the ceiling game, and the get the money from the bottom of a basin of freezing cold water game, Also sitting in darkness wearing silly looking glasses, waiting for the 3D movies to come on RTE that year. There was a three stooges one on during Dempsey's Den. There was also a western on later that night, and even later still there was a horror movie. The Glasses cost £1 and the money went to rehab if I remember rightly.

It was better then because there wasn't as much fireworks going around then. the biggest bang you could expect them days was someone belting a hammer off a roll oc caps, whereas nowadays, they are like bombs going off. one doesn't feel as safe anymore going through the estates for feear some scobe throws one of these things at you for sport.

Also remember some of the horror films that used to be on at the time, The Fog, remember that? I think in 1984, 1985, and 1986, RTE showed Hollowe'en 1,2,and 3 in each of the respective years. That was before this Halloween H2O ****e came out.

oh well thats it really

20 more days to halloween halloween halloween
20 more days to halloween, silver shamrock.

NoDayBut2Day

My family never celebrated Halloween in the "usual" way. As a kid, I remember having a big get together at church with candy and games and costume contests and hay rides... and that kinda stuff... We only went trick or treating once or twice. As I got older, I began helping out with those "Fall Festival" nights. Good times.

Not sure what's going on this year. The church we're at now doesn't have those Fall Festival nights. Maybe a group of us will get together; that would be fun...

CiDeRmAn

Well, at least we have Tim Burtons Corpse Bride to see in the films, a future classic to be watched along side A Nightmare Before Christmas, great for freaking out your parents.

NoDayBut2Day

CiDeRmAn wrote:

Well, at least we have Tim Burtons Corpse Bride to see in the films, a future classic to be watched along side A Nightmare Before Christmas, great for freaking out your parents.

Oh yeah that's right... hehe.. I want to see that movie!